


The Oracle

by TS2



Series: Path to Redemption [2]
Category: Westworld (TV)
Genre: Madness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-07
Updated: 2020-08-07
Packaged: 2021-03-06 03:53:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,234
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25767001
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TS2/pseuds/TS2
Summary: William gets a warning from Juliet.Spoilers Westworld season 1-2
Series: Path to Redemption [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1824142
Kudos: 1





	The Oracle

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place during Season 2 episode 1

(William is sitting on a bed in his cabin, sporting a superficial wound on his upper left arm and wearing a disheveled bloody tuxedo outfit, drinking a bottle of whiskey, staring at his ‘man in black’ outfit in a trunk next to his bed, considering the events that just unfolded in the past 24 hours. Juliet, his dead wife wearing a black dress, appears and takes a seat next to him on the bed, looking at him.)

JULIET: “Hello, Billy.”

WILLIAM: (not surprised at her presence, not looking at her but staring straight ahead) “It’s been awhile. Three weeks, maybe?”

JULIET: “You tell me. Thirty years of memories together, and you always imagine me drunk, bitter and wearing the same damn dress. (grabbing his bottle and taking a swig)”

WILLIAM: “It’s the way I last saw you alive. Would you prefer another outfit?”

JULIET: “What about a blue dress, something a rancher’s daughter would wear?”

WILLIAM: (taking the bottle back) “No. You weren’t just a puppet, you were real. I respect you too much to do that.”

JULIET: (sad laughter) “Respect? As time went on, I got stuck with just the leftovers of your park vacations. By the end, our marriage was just another role you were playing.”

WILLIAM: “I needed what was in here. What I could be in here. I was protecting you from all that.”

JULIET: “Ah, yes. The violence. The cruelty. (sarcastic) You really were the hero after all, protecting me from the make-believe dragons you had to face in here. Where would the world be without Sir William, the black knight.”

WILLIAM: (annoyed) “I have to get moving Juliet so can we make this a short visit?”

JULIET: “Like I have any control over that. In fact, why am I even here? Do you want praise for your latest victory, giving the hosts the ability to end your life once and for all? Why should I? From what I can tell you didn’t do anything.”

WILLIAM: “I unlocked Arnold’s maze.”

JULIET: “Really? How?”

WILLIAM: “…Not sure exactly…”

JULIET: “Taking credit where credit isn’t due. That’s not like you, Sir Billy. Your moral code is failing, along with your mind.”

WILLIAM: “My mind is fine. Talking to you is simply a way of dealing with my grief. I partly blame myself, so this helps me to move on.”

JULIET: “Been over a year. You seem stuck. What stage of grief are you even on? The fact you’re talking to me looks like denial, which is only the first stage. (shaking her head) A year, and still in denial.”

WILLIAM: “I’m still processing it.”

JULIET: “Stuck in a loop. Just like you’re little host friends in here. I’m sure Ford, wherever he is, is enjoying having added you to his collection of toys.”

WILLIAM: “Bullshit. I’ve always made my own choices in here, just like the real world. I choose to play the game. I’ve even changed the damn rules more to my liking.”

JULIET: “Always master of your own fate. No one’s ever pulled a fast one on you in here. Well, almost no one…”

WILLIAM: “I was naïve. This place cured me of that. Became who I needed to be to survive in the real world.”

JULIET: “I’m sure you would have perished quickly being forced to live a quiet life of love and devotion with me.”

WILLIAM: “You deserved better. You deserved who I became, not who I was.”

JULIET: (sad laughter) “I saw through your bullshit when I was alive, why wouldn’t I see through it now? Your choices had nothing to do with any concern for me, or what you thought I deserved. (sombre) You never should have come here. Look what it’s done to you, how far you’ve fallen. ”

WILLIAM: “I feel more alive right now then I have in a long time. And I’m going to prove you and Emily wrong, you’ll see.”

JULIET: “Stop pretending. (slowly tracing a line along the side of Williams head with her index finger) I see it all. Every little detail. The sickness inside you. At least I can blame my drinking on you. Who’s to blame for your addictions?”

WILLIAM: (shaking his head) “Addictions…I choose to do what I do in here.”

JULIET: (tapping a few times on the side of his head with her finger) “Because torturing puppets is what sane people do.”

WILLIAM: (agitated) “It’s a fucking game. They aren’t real. That’s what you don’t get, you never get. I have to repeat myself over and over-”

JULIET: “Just a boy playing with his toys? Is this how you played with your toys in your youth, William? I don’t think so. They’re not even your toys.”

WILLIAM: “I own them. They’re mine.”

JULIET: “But you don’t dictate how they’re used. What they do. Who they manipulate. Who they seduce.”

WILLIAM: “You need an opponent in order to win a game. The greater the opponent, the greater the victory.”

JULIET: “And who’s your opponent in here?”

WILLIAM: “You know who. I suspect he leans on some help these days for a lot of the smaller narratives. But I can feel his presence in the big ones. His artistic touch.”

JULIET: “I’m sure you can. You felt that touch intimately your first trip here. Is that what you’re constantly craving, the excitement of that first time you were fooled? Or is it you want to prove you can never be fooled again? You certainly fooled me. I pegged you for something different. (said with pity and disgust) Instead, I helped create…you. ”

WILLIAM: “It’s not your fault who I am in here. That’s all on me.”

JULIET: “You know there would be no ‘black knight’ in here without me. You would have ended your days as some upper-middle management type. I was your key, not her. I wonder if you ever would have visited this place without me. And if you did…would you have played the game any differently? Do you think she still would have chosen you?”

WILLIAM: “She chooses everybody, all you have to do is pick up the fucking can and she’ll bat her eyelashes at you. It’s just part of the game -“

JULIET: “Does she remember everybody after thirty years? Proclaim that her love is ‘real’, insist that it was her choice to actually love you of all people?”

WILLIAM: “Just another part of Ford’s story…like it was the first time.”

JULIET: “Of course. What’s the alternative? That what you secretly wished for growing up was actually real? That somehow your devotion could save the woman of your dreams, your one true love?”

WILLIAM: “That’s madness.”

JULIET: “How kind of Ford to throw in that bit of nostalgia for you just before his unfortunate demise. Just when he was about to enjoy the fruits of his retirement. How cruel.”

WILLIAM: “Cruel…have you seen the narratives this guy writes? You think I’M insane...He was on another level…”

JULIET: “He does seem to operate on another level, always one step ahead of you…just when you think you’re on the path YOU want to be, turns out HE wanted you there all along.”

WILLIAM: “I’m exactly where I want to be. This is beyond Ford’s stories. This is deeper, more meaningful. I’m going to show you who I really am.”

JULIET: “Sounds like what you said 30 years ago to your beloved-“

WILLIAM: “That guy’s gone. I was reborn long ago.”

JULIET: “Which explains why you’re talking to yourself, and not to me. I could see what she saw in you back then. A certain earnestness to do the right thing…you had more backbone than you gave yourself credit for.”

WILLIAM: “A fucking loser. Ford throwing me into the deep end of the pool saved me from a lifetime of mediocrity. As big of an asshole as he was, he taught me what I needed to know so I didn’t suffer that fate.”

JULIET: “And now you’re deciding your own fate in here.”

WILLIAM: “Goddamn right I am.”

JULIET: “You sure about that? You sound like a pathetic gambler convinced that he knows a way to beat the casino at their own game.”

WILLIAM: “I OWN the casino.”

JULIET: “Yes, but you’re not the one running it. Your content playing the games he throws at you, never asking yourself why. What level he’s playing at.”

WILLIAM: “Who gives a fuck what he wanted, he’s dead.”

JULIET: (feigning being hurt) “Ouch. Is that why you never even completed that list of endowments I’d left in my will?”

WILLIAM: “Believe me, I gave a hell of a lot of money in your name after you left. People will be singing your praises for centuries. If I forgot one or two out of a list of dozens and dozens-“

JULIET: “Will anyone be singing your praises when you’re gone? Will Emily be lamenting your loss?”

WILLIAM: “…Who gives a fuck, I’ll be dead.”

JULIET: “So what was the point of your life? Why are you here?”

WILLIAM: (agitated) “Give me a break with this bullshit. Look at everything I’ve built in my life, you think that just appears out of thin air? Do you know how hard I’ve worked at being who I am?”

JULIET: (sarcastic) “I’m very impressed, Billy. Your success must give you an enormous sense of fulfillment. You must have an overwhelming feeling of meaning and purpose in your life. Which explains why you feel the need to torture puppets in the dark corners of this place.”

WILLIAM: “It’s a game, they’re not real. For the millionth time.”

JULIET: “Why do you play, then? Why do you do the things you do in here?”

WILLIAM: “…To prove something to myself. Who I really am. What I’m capable of.”

JULIET: “Who Ford allowed you to be. What he allowed you to do.”

WILLIAM: “I made my own choices in here. ‘I am the master of my fate. I am the captain of my soul.’”

JULIET: “He decided what choices you were allowed. He’s just as much the creator of who you are as you. That ‘artistic touch’ you felt was Ford chipping away at your character with a chisel, a master sculptor working with granite, one choice at a time. His most avid fan turned into a trained dog. Like Pavlov, he’s trained you to salivate at the mere ring of a bell. Or the appearance of a certain rancher’s daughter. Just can’t help yourself.”

WILLIAM: “That’s just your jealously talking. You always hated her.”

JULIET: “Of course. You loved her.”

WILLIAM: “That was a long time ago. I know what she is now, what she always was. Just another host.”

JULIET: “Please, even if I was alive I wouldn’t have believed that. Again and again, year after year, you’d search her out, play with your toys…under Fords watchful eye.”

WILLIAM: “Ford didn’t make me do those things to Dolores; that was me. My choice.”

JULIET: “He didn’t trick you into falling in love with a puppet?”

WILLIAM: “That was my choice, too.”

JULIET: “‘Master of your fate, captain of your soul’. Willing to sell it for the first blue-eyed puppet that batted her eyes at you. Did you believe your love somehow was making her real, too? How humiliating.”

WILLIAM: “I learned my lesson. And choose to remind myself of that lesson from time to time. I suffered and I’m stronger for it. That’s how life works.”

JULIET: “Quite the narrative Ford was going for, a mix of ‘Pinocchio’ and ‘Pygmalion’…with all those little details that never quite added up for you. Dolores being able to carve into Logan’s face; her mentioning Arnold by name; the vital role Logan’s choices played in moving everything along; the narrative simply falling apart if you chose not to believe at any point, as any sane person would have chosen-“

WILLIAM: “I don’t have time to beat a dead horse, are we done?”

JULIET: “Have you considered beating that horse again with what happened yesterday?”

WILLIAM: (annoyed) “I’m fighting for my life here, I don’t have time for this bullshit.”

JULIET: “This is exactly what you wanted, what you were trying to accomplish. Yet you have no idea how it happened, or why. The host allies of Ford’s last great villain deliberately executing guests with weapons turned lethal, yet you, unarmed, somehow survive. Ford shot dead by them the same day he’s forced to retire. The same day she remembers you for the first time in 30 years, at the same place she thought was her home all those years-”

WILLIAM: (exasperated) “Just fucking LEAVE already…you don’t understand, I WANT this. I don’t give a fuck about you, or her. This is about MY life, MY fate.”

JULIET: (with pity) “How sad, reduced to being just another unwitting player in one of Fords narratives. Even worse, you’re happy in the role. You’ve decided your final fate; being a captive to whatever Ford has in store for you. You’re the damsel in distress. A dream inside a madman’s fantasy. Like I am. Like her.”

WILLIAM: (Angry, throwing the bottle of whiskey at the far wall of the cabin and smashing it) “JUST FUCKING LEAVE ALREADY.”

(Williams alone in his cabin, sitting on his bed, sweating, angry, staring at the broken pieces of the bottle)

WILLIAM: (quietly) “…I’m master of my fate...”


End file.
